Making enemies out of friends

In a city where demonstrations are a daily almost banal occurrence, one scheduled for 4 November has left Jakarta on an uncharacteristic edge.

Dominating headlines for several weeks, concerns over the possibilities for violence recently prompted the President, Joko Widodo, to pose for awkward photos on horseback alongside his former presidential rival, Prabowo Subianto — in a measure apparently intended to ease tensions. Meanwhile, senior figures in the military have speculated out loud of a possible ‘Arab spring’ like uprising, while some analysts have warned of infiltration by ISIS sympathisers.

Organised by the Islamic vigilante organisation the Defenders of Islam Front (FPI) together with a number of other hard-line Islamist groups, it will be the second demonstration in as many months demanding the arrest of Jakarta’s governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, or Ahok, for allegedly insulting the Qur’an.

The rhetoric surrounding the demonstrations has become increasingly ugly and violent in tone. Accusations of blasphemy have merged with overtly racist hate-speech. The governor is an ethnic Chinese Christian. Banners inciting ethnicised violence have popped up around the city, invoking painful memories of the anti-Chinese violence of 1998. With elections for the governor scheduled for February 2017, it has sparked alarms campaigning will be marred by sectarianism.

The FPI are by no means newcomers to this kind of politics, having over the past 16 years mastered the art of prizing open various social and economic tensions, and injecting them with a distinctly unpleasant sectarian odour.

Similar vitriol and threats of violence have been directed against followers of the Ahmadiyah sect, Batak Christians, LGBT and Shiite Muslims, while back in 2001 the FPI protested against the presidency of Megawati on the grounds that it was forbidden for a woman to be leader of a Muslim majority nation.

This mix of wedge politics, morality racketeering and street level thuggery together with a perennial ‘use value’ to political elites has enabled a relative minnow in comparison to large mainstream Islamic organisations such as Nahdatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah to continue to punch far above its weight. The hype surrounding the demonstration, regardless of whatever transpires, will be seen as invaluable marketing in this regard.

What, however, explains the increasing numbers of poor and working class people rallying around the FPI’s vitriolic campaign against the governor? Is this, as some analysts have suggested, signs of growing intolerance and religious extremism allowed to fester unchecked by government, presumably due to fear of prompting an Islamic backlash? Or is it as others have argued, just another case of Jakarta’s political elites mobilising rent-a-mobs as part of their jockeying for advantage in the lead up to the February elections?

While the above cannot be wholly discarded it’s important here to consider some context. Since taking office as governor in 2014, Ahok has presided over one of the most aggressive campaigns of evictions and forced displacements in the modern history of the city. Reliable statistics on the numbers directly impacted are difficult to come by. However, reports compiled by the Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation estimate that upward of 16,000 overwhelmingly poor and working class families have been displaced in the past two years alone. Only 30 per cent have been offered any alternative accommodation, the social and economic impacts of which have been devastating.

This policy has been immensely popular amongst the cities middle-class and seen as part of an uncompromising effort to tackle endemic problems of flooding, traffic congestion and lawlessness.

What many have failed to consider, or simply ignored, is the massive groundswell of anger and resentment generated by this policy regime. It has spread far beyond the tens of thousands directly impacted through extended family, friends, neighbours and social, cultural and work networks.

This anger has, unsurprisingly, sought to find avenues of expression and amelioration.

When Ahok’s entourage was confronted by hundreds of stone-throwing youths in Penjaringan in the city’s north in June, some may have been yelling ‘Allahu Akbar’, but the sentiment animating them was not religious extremism. It was solidarity with friends and neighbours who had lost their homes. As one teenager involved in the violence explained to me, ‘I got involved because half of my class have been left homeless by Ahok. He’s not welcome here’.

Many of the same youths attended the October demonstration calling for Ahok’s arrest, and will likely also be present on 4 November.

Some neighbourhoods now rallying against the governor under banners provided to them by the FPI and other hardliners were just two years earlier some of his most enthusiastic supporters. All have since been subject to forced evictions.

Photo: Ian Wilson

The seeming ease with which religious hardliners and other reactionary groups have been able to capture and shape the tone of opposition to Ahok amongst segments of Jakarta’s poor and working class has been made easier by the relative absence of any coherent alternatives.

Since the rise of Jokowi public intellectuals and middle-class activists have largely abandoned the struggles of the city’s poor. Mainstream religious organisations such as Nahdatul Ulama have also remained conspicuously silent, despite their membership heartland in Jakarta’s north being especially hard hit by forced evictions.

The last hope of many kampung residents was that the self-proclaimed party of the ‘little people’, the PDI-P, would back an alternative candidate for the governor. When it instead declared its support for Ahok’s re-election, the despair and frustration were tangible.

The apparent impunity of the governor, such as his disregard of the legal status quo in the eviction of Bukit Duri, has only served to magnify the perception that he is a law unto himself. In this space, conspiracy theories of cabals of Chinese developers pulling strings have found fertile ground. Rumours of his alleged insulting of the Qur’an were, for many, the final straw.

With no voice or coherent organisational vehicle for those marginalised by Ahok’s policies, the door has been left wide open for hardliners. And they have jumped at the opportunity.

For Ahok strategists the apparent ‘radicalising’ of opposition to him and alarmism generated around 4 November is by no means a bad thing. It provides proof to middle-class constituents that opposition to him is driven by sectarianism, rather than rational grievances, and confirmation that the poor and working class are illiberal and dangerous.

Public debate over the impact of his evictions regime or the legality of the contentious reclamation project in Jakarta Bay has, for the moment, disappeared entirely. Ahok’s election campaign manager Ruhut Sitompul, a former senior figure in New Order gangster organisation Pemuda Pancasila, went so far as to refer to the blasphemy demonstrators as Ahok’s ‘success team’.

Whatever transpires on 4 November the anger of those marginalised and maligned by the administration’s policies against the governor will remain. It would pay to take the time to listen.

Ian Wilson is a lecturer in politics and security studies, and a Research Fellow at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University.

Very good example of reasons for demonstrations and the most valid one i.e. losing their former ‘warga negara kelas satu’ position and becomes like everyone else. A hard pill to swallow but that is democracy. If Ahok had been governor of Manado or Medan, the result would have been the similar, only the ‘first class citizen’ would be different.

However the people with these valid arguments (valid because they want their first class status back – doesn’t everyone?) is dwarfed by the people who are bigots, racists and traitors to the founding founders of this nation, and people paid by the elites to shake Ahok and the Jokowi govt.

Ahok (and Jokowi) once visited and promised to people at Bukit Duri and Kampung Pulo not to evict them, and agreed to their proposal of Kampung Deret which allow those people to remain there. People there were happy & gave their vote to Jokowi and Ahok despite the sectarian issue at the time.

Now Ahok has broken his promise, and offered no dialogue nor any apology. And the supporters of Ahok, the awful urban middle class, vilify them constantly in social media when these evicted people try to remind ahok of his promise of dialogue and participatory development. How come these evicted don’t find sectarian groups are attractive enough to vent their anger towards ahok?

The argument resonates with many in the left in the Western world, that left-wing parties like PDI-P and the the Democrats in the US have neglect the interest of the poor and marginalized to the forces of capitalism and globalization, and now you are seeing a right wing backlash.

But when was the PDI-P really a left wing party. The author forgets that the PDI (PDi-P) was a New Order creation – Sukarno’s PNI, Indonesian Christian Party, Indonesian Catholic Party and Purba. Only Purba, the smallest of the parties, had socialist leanings. Indonesian parties even before 1965 have been about religion more than economics, much like Europe of the early 20th century and late 19th century (outside of the UK). 35% of PDI-P legislator are non-Muslim, if you add in Muslim women, Muslim men are in the minority in the PDi-P.

Secondly, there have been a couple of articles about the evictions. in New Mandala, most of them highly critical. Like this article none of them offer viable solutions that won’t be expensive or solve the flooding issues. The article seems to skirt around the problem, is that politicians in Indonesia like Ahok are just doing what the voters want, which in his case means people with a Jakarta ID. Everyone with a Jakarta ID that has been evicted has been granted a Rusun, means about 30-50% of the people evicted won’t be getting anything. That is the crux of the problem, does offer to abolish the system, and grant every Javanese villager who moves to Jakarta settle on a river bank to get a low rent apartment in a couple of year’s time.

What does New Mandala suggest. Well I know. The typical New Mandala solution will be the following 1) Create a committee 2) Hire some Australian consultants preferably the author and his some of his buddies 3) Have said individuals write a Report 4) Have consultations with stakeholders 5) Have meeting present the report 6) File the report 7) Forget about the problem.

Lastly, if Ahok wasn’t the Governor and a guy like Boy Sadikin was the governor, and did exactly what Ahok did, would FPI be protesting? No.

I have never heard of a political party called ‘Purba’. Are you perhaps thinking of Murba? It had a lot of prominent former pemuda in its ranks and, according to Anderson and McVey, could infuriate the PKI more than any other party.

One would have thought that the only Indonesian politician who talks more than Ahok is Ruhut Sitompul, so it is only fitting that this weird character should be Ahok’s campaign manager.

There is additional spice in this dish, given the accusation, reportedly contained in some intelligence assessment or other, that SBY is surreptitiously backing tomorrow’s demonstrations. At least Australia has not been fingered as the source. SBY’s son and Jakarta gubernatorial candidate Agus Harimurti has denounced the accusation as a ‘cruel slander’. He would have been closer to the mark if he had called it ‘utter rubbish’.

Ruhut Sitompul was long the Democrats’ leading blowhard. He seemed to have an opinion on anything and everything. It would be easier to believe that it was Ruhut who was backing the protest, rather than the former president. But that might have been too much even for him.

Poor native indonesian don’t need ahok to feel marginalised. The resentment towards chinese has always been there even since Dutch colonial time. It used to be economic disparity which cause the friction and now one of their golden boy is a lawmaker who is making things worse and seems to aim the least fortunate. I just hope it won’t end up with another anti-chinese riot.

The 4 November demonstrations have had an unexpected consequence in Jokowi’s cancellation, or at least postponement, of his visit to Australia. This is probably the first time FPI and kindred organisations have brought about such a result. It was no doubt unintended. Ahok was their target, not Jokowi.

Why Jokowi took this step when the demonstrations had practically ended is a puzzle. His leadership of Indonesia was not at issue. Domestic concerns usually trump the exigencies of foreign policy for political leaders in most countries, but the concerns need to be serious ones. This is hardly the case here.

FPI’s Rizieq has warned that his forces and their allies will take to the streets again in three weeks unless the police solves the problem of what to do about Ahok. If the Jokowi visit is rescheduled for some time in the near future, Rizieq’s threat may prompt a further postponement.

Last-minute cancellations of head of state/government visits cause considerable inconvenience for the receiving governments. Jokowi will not have increased the number of his admirers in Australia by taking this step.

“Professor Hal Hill from the Australian National University writes in today’s Financial Review that the demonstrations have “shaken Indonesia” and were “arguably the most serious in the country since the May 1998 demonstrations that led to the demise of the 32-year Soeharto presidency”.

He called it the most serious crisis of Mr Widodo’s presidency, that his ongoing tenure was “an open question” and he would have to focus more on home and less on abroad.

“He will be ever more focused on domestic priorities in the coming months. Australia and the rest of the neighbourhood, who have such a vital interest in Indonesian prosperity and stability, will have to be patient,” he writes.

With all due respect, I disagree with Professor Hill. If it was target at Jokowi to abdicate, he won’t simply abdicate. Not as long as Jokowi commands the loyalty of the army and the police, and also the ruling party of PDI-P. As far as i know, all of the Head of Indonesian Army and Police, are of PDI-P/Jokowi’s camp.

In my opinion, it was targeted to contest and halt PDI-P’s influence in gaining political hegemony in Jakarta. It is understandable, since Ahok is PDI-P’s candidate. To stop Ahok, would mean to stop PDI-P’s political hegemony in Jakarta.

Thanks for your comment. Hal Hill predicted on the East Asia Forum website in 2014 that Jokowi would be re-elected in 2019. I commented on his post that we should wait until we could look at the 2019 polls before agreeing with him. Now, two years later, Hill already sees Jokowi ‘on the ropes’.

It was far too early to predict in 2014 that Jokowi would get a second term, and it is far too early to predict now that Jokowi is almost finished.

“To date Jokowi has been an extraordinarily successful politician, consistently under-estimated by his rivals. He retains great popular appeal. His record to date suggests that he will manage this episode effectively. But one thing is certain: he will be ever more focused on domestic priorities in the coming months. Australia and the rest of the neighbourhood, who have such a vital interest in Indonesian prosperity and stability, will have to be patient.:

Hal Hill thinks its a major concern, but at the end Jokowi will handle it effectively.

I disagree with you, that it is ust about Ahok, why did Lulung take a back seat. Ahok’s arch nemesis during the protest was playing a second fiddle. Lulung is no idiot, this was beyond his pay grade, and he might get censored by the national level PPP (his party) which supports Jokowi at the national level. You have national level politicians like Faldi Zon and Fahri Hamzah leading the protest.

Secondly, it may be just about Ahok, but that doesn’t mean that Jokowi isn’t going to use it to his advantage. if you look at it that way, you should ask yourself what does Jokowi want to achieve. All of a sudden in the last couple of days, Jokowi and the PDI-P are preparing a flurry of lawsuits against protest leaders. Why? Suing Ahmad Dhani? For what? Then PDI-P’s potential lawsuits against Fadli Zon and Fahri Hamzah. Did you know that someone sent a mob to Jokowi’s mother’s house in Solo to have a cheat with her. Luckily the police intervene and stopped it.

As an expert in Australian-Indonesia relations I assume you are disappointed that you missed the opportunity to pontificate about Jokowi’s lack of interest in Australia-Indonesian relations. As I mentioned above, if a someone has taken upon themselves to organize a mob to have a chat with your elderly mother, you would take it pretty seriously would you not? What does Jokowi’s mother have to do with Ahok?

Academics and policy analyst do better analysis when they wait 1-2 weeks after a major event has happened to determine the potential fallout. To write analysis just 1-2 days after the event is silly.. Because without facts, your analysis isn’t that much better than what mainstream publications are saying

I personally believe it is more important than you make out to be. First, there is social media and internet, people are more plugged. 15 years ago, if you asked a middle class 20something in NTT who was the Governor of Jakarta, do you think they would know? Ahok is a household name in Christian parts of Eastern Indonesia, because he is the most prominent non-Muslim politician in Indonesia.

I am not a policy expert. I am in the private sect or. 15 years ago ago I used to buy alot of Indonesian media, and at that time our company was one of largest media buyers in the country. We were a rinky dink outfit, but for TV spots we were among the top ten nation wide. What I noticed is there are a lot of regional newspapers in Indonesia,, some owned by the many media houses (ie Jawa Pos), some independent outfits. You start googling Ahok NTT, Ahok Manado and Ahok Papua and see what you come up with. There are stories about ormas in those areas we will support Ahok etc. And since the spread of the internet, alot of regional news portals.

You find stories like this across Christian majority areas in Indonesia.

That is just the tip of the iceberg. The danger of a lot of policy makers, journalist and businessmen .they are Jakarta centric or at very best Java centric. That is why Jokowi is taking this matter very seriously, and he should.

In my opinion if not handled correctly, it would be like the Dreyfus affair war to France. Its not going to kill Indonesia, but will linger.

I think a lot of Indonesia watchers have been accustomed to extreme acts of violence in Indonesia, that if Muslims hold a really in Jakarta with minor looting and one death due to asthma complications, its not important, because by Indonesian standards its nothing. Yes you are right. No one is hacking anyone’s limbs ala Sampit. But Indonesian society and democracy has matured, just as France did during Dreyfus Affair from 1789 revolution, that such events don’t spark extreme acts of violence. Just because they aren’t as violent, doesn’t mean they aren’t significant.

About the Author

Ian Wilson is a lecturer in politics and security studies, and a Research Fellow at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University.

Ian's research interests focus upon Indonesian politics and society, in particular the political economy of gangs, organised crime and political violence. He also has an interest in urban politics, in particular infrastructural politics, political agency of the urban poor, informal economies and the relationship between urbanisation and social and political change.